Cadence Compliance Management System
and Metric Drive Verification Enables
ClearSpeed to Reach Coverage Goals Faster
By Mike Bartley
Test and Verification Manger
ClearSpeed
"We brought up the CMS compliance
test suite in our verification environment in just a day. Our team was
impressed with the rapid results. We identified a number of failures
right away and we're now working to dramatically expand our regression
runs to take full advantage of the CMS."
Mike Bartley,
test and verification manager, ClearSpeed
Acceleration Technology for High Performance
Computing
ClearSpeed Technology is the world
leader in acceleration technology. The company produces coprocessors,
boards and software tools for use in high performance computing. The
products are designed to dramatically increase computer performance
without significantly impacting power requirements.
The company's Advance™ Accelerator
products use the ClearSpeed CSX600, an embedded parallel processor with
96 cores that executes 25 billion 64-bit floating point operations per
second while typically consuming only 10 Watts of energy. The CSX600
is simultaneously the fastest processor design available for 64-bit
floating-point performance and the most energy efficient.
To support the development of its PCI
Express based products, ClearSpeed evaluated its verification capabilities.
"We had been using Cadence's PCI Express Universal Verification
Component (UVC) for a year or so," said Mike Bartley, test and verification
manager. "Then we were shown a new solution that would help us further
refine our processes: a PCI Express Compliance Management System."
Each CMS includes an executable verification
plan, or "vPlan," a compliance test suite and a full set of compliance
metrics. In ClearSpeed's case, the verification team is working with
the PCI Express CMS and focusing on bridging the coverage gap they foresee
in their "Callanish" chip.
"The UVC gives us the ability to
automatically create many different PCI Express transactions," said
Bartley. "Then, with the compliance part of it, we get a new level
of accuracy and predictability. It reports back to us clear indications
of our compliance status."
"CMS gives us an invaluable
project management tool because it helps us completely understand and
report on our verification status by regularly tracking coverage, bug
statistics, and test failures in each of the main functional areas."
Mike Bartley, test and verification
manager, ClearSpeed
Rapid Results
ClearSpeed has adopted CMS as an integral
part of their verification flow, which also includes Cadence Enterprise
Manager for regression running. "We brought up the CMS compliance
test suite in our verification environment in just a day," said Bartley.
"Our team was impressed with the rapid results. We identified a number
of failures right away and we're now working to dramatically expand
our regression runs to take full advantage of the CMS."
Prioritizing Verification Objectives
Bartley explained that the development
team at ClearSpeed needed to prioritize coverage targets, and subsequently,
identify the best processes available for reaching the targets. Upon
seeing the PCI Express Compliance Management System (CMS), ClearSpeed
recognized the solution was precisely what they needed to achieve their
objective and satisfy an aggressive time-to-market schedule.
ClearSpeed's team decided to pursue
an approach where they would first concentrate efforts on achieving
100% coverage of the high priority items. After, they would turn their
attention to lower priority coverage areas and potentially allow waivers
for non-covered lower priority items during sign-off.
Superior Project Management
Now that CMS is in place at ClearSpeed,
Bartley estimates his team can dramatically reduce the effort required
to signoff the PCI Express interface on the Callanish chip but, more
importantly, reduce the time to signoff through coverage prioritization.
Additionally, Bartley was eager to explain how the solution fosters
superior management processes. "We have gained some major improvements
with our ability to track progress and better assign resources. CMS
gives us an invaluable project management tool because it helps us completely
understand and report on our verification status by regularly tracking
coverage, bug statistics, and test failures in each of the main functional
areas," he said.
Conclusions
The verification approach ClearSpeed
adopted has proven to be highly successful, This approach, based on
metrics-driven verification and employing third party VIP, exceeded
their expectations and successfully verified the integration of existing
IP into the ClearSpeed chip. As evidence of this success ClearSpeed
has achieved first time silicon success on the CSX700 chip as demonstrated
by:
Successful compliance testing
results including the first time success in all machines at the PCIe
PlugFest in February 2008
100% successful boot cycle
testing results over a number of servers and chipsets.
Successful integration with
ClearSpeed's full suite of supported OS'es1 over all
available servers.
All performance and power
targets were met.
Notes
Mike Bartley has left the employment
of ClearSpeed and now is providing independent verification consulting
services. He can be contacted at mike@tandvsolns.co.uk.
ClearSpeed remains fully committed to the verification approach described.
